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Steve Jobs Weighs In On iPhone Programming Language Mandate
Dotnaught writes "Greg Slepak, founder of software company Tao Effect, wrote Apple CEO Steve Jobs to complain about Apple's mandate that iPhone applications be originally written in C/C++/Objective-C. Job's response was to endorse a post by John Gruber on the Daring Fireball blog. Jobs called it 'very insightful,' suggesting Gruber's prediction that third-party iPhone development tools are out might be right. Jobs sent a second reply that also doesn't bode well for third-party iPhone development tools: 'We've been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.'"
if google cleans up the requirements for the google app bundle, things may change very quickly.
the problem with android right now is that google only allows their app bundle on devices that seems to have a 3G connection (that at least is the most obvious requirement, but the list is apparently under NDA). Heck, the whole management of android reeks of attempting to merge open source with apple marketing.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Have you ever used flash? It's slow as hell, shutters on pal resolution movies even, and often uses 100% of the CPU Time of one of my cores in my 8 Core Mac Pro.
BRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIINNNNG!!! CALLER ON CLUE PHONE LINE #1
Flash performs badly on Apples because Apple wants it to perform badly. You are mad at Adobe when you should really be mad at Apple. They have denied you the capability of having a good experience.
I am honestly quite surprised that Adobe has put up with this crap. Adobe made Apple what it is today by making Macintosh's the desktop publishing and graphics editing leader. Apple has been shoving a sharp stick in their eye in regards to Flash.
"His name was James Damore."
OpenCL - Only 2 years old, and requires Snow Leopard or newer.
Think about that. What you are saying is that Adobe has had all of 2 years to hardware accelerate some of Flash (not all of flash) and that the userbase for this new Flash will consist of only people who have purchased Mac's in the past 2 years.
Imagine if this was Microsoft that we were talking about. I know for certain that you would say that Microsoft is evil because up until 2 years ago, that they reserved feature access for themselves in a proprietary anti-competitive manner manner.
But this is Apple, and you didn't even know how long OpenCL has been available. You just know its one of them buzzwords that makes software great on your shiny new Mac system.
"His name was James Damore."
Right, because Apple is just blind to the fact that REAL devs use Flash, Mono and C#. If they cut out those heavyweights, whose left to code apps for the platform? Me personally, I like to smear and fling my own feces against the wall and cross-compile that to iPhone OS, and now that it is forbidden, I guess I'll just have to go back to developing for DotNET. I don't care how fucking lucrative developing for iPhone might be... I don't know ObjC, and if I have to learn something new to code for a new platform then I'll just wait for the platform to fail. If I don't already know it, it just isn't worth knowing.
The Admin and the Engineer
Apple doesn't sell hardware and software. They sell Apple computers which are comprised of hardware and software. Just like Tivo, XBox, and Palm Pre's. None of those companies will let you buy the hardware without the software or the software without the hardware.
Depends on how the app is "sub-standard". If it violates guidelines/rules, then fine. But what about apps that don't fully use iPhone's features because it is catering for the lowest common denominator across multiple platforms?
I wish I could mod Jobs' comment insightful.
'We've been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.'
That is exactly what will happen. Many /.er are happy to rant about Java's "write once run anywhere" as bunk. Using an intermediate layer to provide the same app on both iPhone and Android will ultimately make it a bad app on both platforms.
We have seen sucky ports of programs before, Jobs probably don't want those on the iPhone.
It is perfectly reasonable to want fewer high-quality apps on the platform, rather than wishing for more crap apps. This just aligns with the usual Apple approach.
Oliver.
I love the way people compare an Apple monopoly to Micro$ofts. If Apple get big they must be evil (Strange no-one seems to apply that logic to Google though).
It's very simple - App£e and Micro$oft charge money for closed-source stuff, Google's stuff is open and pretty much free-of-charge.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Will the iPhone market survive the lack of games?
What lack of games?
There are tens of thousands of games on the iPhone already, and more coming all the time.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Louis Gerbarg has written up a very good explanation of the issues involved.
Quote:
Adobe is a large company with a significant, and complicated, relationship with Apple. They have frequent high level contacts and meetings. Adobe has known for quite some time about Apple's desire not to have Flash on the iPhone. There is no doubt in my mind that if they asked Apple to bless this they were rebuffed, and if they didn't ask the only reason they didn't was because they knew Apple would say no. In either event, they announced the product to their customers and sold them on an idea they were not in a position to deliver, hoping Apple would be unwilling to piss off developers by not fulfilling Adobe's promises. They tried to force Apple's hand by putting Apple in a position where in order stop the Flash they would have to do it publicly in front of Adobe's users. That was a bad call on Adobe's part.
Read the whole thing.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."